Not so emotional downloads

Nicola Adam

Music might be the food of love but it’s also the soundtrack to many a dodgy memory throughout my life.

Something which I’m sure most people can understand, particularly those who are old enough to have passed major milestones during the era of vinyl or cassette tapes.

Most of us amassed our collections of music via teenage trips to Woolworths (RIP) or even more likely through leisurely Saturday forays into the dusty yet irrepressibly cool independent record stores, of which each small town had at least one.

With Record Store Day taking place today (Saturday, April 22), the conversation here in the newsroom inevitably turned to our first musical purchases, most of which were suspiciously cool, with the exception of yours truly who had to admit to Kylie Minogue’s I Should Be So Lucky as my first single.

Indeed, I should be so lucky to have been able to reminisce about The Kinks, The Smiths or Oasis as my first albums like so many of my colleagues, instead recalling Yazz’s The Only Way Is Up as amongst my collection – though I did also have the soundtrack to Annie.

Needless to say I didn’t run in the popular crowd.

Of course, like most teenagers or indeed flocks of sheep, our musical and indeed sartorial tastes were determined much more by what record companies were selling right at that moment and less by how cool or alternative we were.

That kind of taste develops much later as we start to form our loves and hates based on what we actually like – rather than what we what we want to be seen to be liking.

I remember being bored to tears by several of Madchester’s less tuneful indie bands while finding a spot of piano house music much more uplifting – though I didn’t confess.

But when you buy your first record, it wasn’t so much what it was – as what it represented.

Emotional freedom, adulthood, choice and a feeling of being part of a world much wider than just your own experience.

Part of that was rifling through a shop, cherishing a sleeve and marking an emotion.